Hells Gate to Burke and Wills Camp 119

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Hells Gate to Burke and Wills Camp 119.
The coldest start to the day for months, approximately 12 degrees celsius, jumpers pulled out from the bottom of the clothing cupboard.
Slow to warm up and adjusting to the time change we commenced our days travel at 0930hrs, odometer 93729kms. We drove along the corrugated gravel road on the Savannah Way to Doomadgee here we fuelled up at 1.447 cents per litre.
The Road House now out on the highway and the aboriginal community appeared to have got their alcohol problem under control since we last visited, with the Queensland Alcohol Management Plan.
The Aboriginal community is situated on the Nicholson River and it was good to see some aboriginal children come into the roadhouse. Here we fuled up and inflated our tyres back to 40psi
Travelling on until we passed the Tirranna Springs Roadhouse and meet the sealed road from Wills Development Road
Now travelling North East we passed many cattle and cattle stations eventually arriving at Burke Town.
With a resident population of 200+ it services many more.
The traditional owners are the Gangalidda people. Burke and Wills were believed to have explored the area and in 1866. William Landsborough was sent on an expedition to find the Missing Burke and Wills. Landsborough's ship and escort ship was hit by a cyclone off Cape York and the crew drank all the alcohol supplies deserting and sinking the ship. Landsborough, and a crew of 2 members and two aboriginals ventured out to find Burke and Wills on the Albert River. Robert O'Hara Burke and Companion William Wills made the first successful and fatal south-north crossing of the continent.
With no success finding Burke and Wills, Landsborough left a DIG tree were supplies were buried at the base of a tree and the message DIG was engraved in the trunk.
We visited this tree to discover it had been hit by lightning over 10 years ago and a sapling was in it's place.
We also visited the Boiler Down Machine remains. The site of the ill fated Edkin Brothers who began production of boiling cattle in 1867, only to see the venture fail in 1870.
We also visited the Burke Town Bore, which was drilled and completed by the State Government in December 1897, for live stock water supply, Burke Town a huge hub in the 1890's with the meat works and a large numbers of cattle. In the 1950's the CSIRO stated the water was only good for adult cattle to drink and not much good for anything else.
In the 1940's and well into the 1960's the bore operated a bath house.
Almost 60 years later and the tremendous ready made hot water system is still flowing.
The artesian water with it's high quantity of minerals and 63degrees Celsius temperature has left a large stalactite structure and a small wetlands for birds and kangaroos, to which we saw drinking.
Burke Town's hotel is only 4 years old with the original and the 2nd oldest building in Queensland burning down.

Burke Town is most famous for the unique cylindrical cloud, Morning Glory, that expands the horizon between the months is September and November. The Morning Glory can be up to 1000kilometres long and often only 100-200metres above the ground, moving at speeds of 60kilometres an hour rolling in from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Sometimes there is 8 consequently roll clouds.
As for our visit we fuelled up, odometer on 93,927kms at 1400hrs. We ate sandwiches in the park and visited the information centre, temperature a nice 27 degrees celsius.
Back on a sealed section of the Savannah Way for a short stint, we crossed the Leichardt River, 70kms south east of Burke Town, stopping to observe the water fall.
named after Ludwig Leichhardt a Prussian explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of the northern and central areas of Australia.
Turning due east a couple of kilometres over the waterway we stopped to talk with a lone bicyclist (Paulie Ebjer) cycling from Cairns to Broome, on the corrugated dirt road, we gave him some ice cold water from our refrigerator in the van,
We travelled on to Normanton, over several large rivers until we reached Burke and Wills 119 Camp, as the sun dropped below the earth we set up in the free camp site, lit an open fire and ate fish, vegetable rice and salad for dinner.

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